Rogue and Logan -- Catch up, backdated to Nov.20

[x-traction.livejournal.com]

In which Rogue and Logan have a long overdue reunion, and both talk way more than they usually do



Annoyed wasn't even the right word for the emotion she was feeling. Hurt? Betrayed? Elated? Frustrated?

Nope. None of them truly encapsulated ‎ how she felt when she'd learned Logan was back at the Mansion and he hadn't even told her first. No, she had to find out while she having coffee with Lorna, and she overheard someone talking about the last mission. It was all she could do to finish her coffee, thank Lorna, and go stalking off into the woods. It was easy to forget that she'd essentially been living in the Boathouse, working on some portraits, dead to the world.

There's no way Logan would stay in the lab, even if Jean insisted on a full medical,so Rogue stomped heavily into the back of the property, making as much noise as possible. "Alright, ya foolish Canuck. Doncha know that I'm the most important thing in this hear Mansion, and ‎y'all didn't have the decency to say hi to me?" She stepped a bit further in, raising her voice. "If you value the sound of silence, come on out and shut me up!"

This wasn't the way Logan wanted to end up back at the mansion, but what could he do? It wasn't like he'd ever turn down a chance to learn more about the damn program. Though he should've learned by now. Learning more always came at a cost and this time it didn't even affect one of them that had been in the program. He took a heavy drag off his cigar and watched the smoke curl up into the air.

He felt the ground tremble before he heard her. It was only a matter of time. He wasn't stupid enough to think he'd be let off the hook for not saying hi. The steady stream of "I'm alive" objects he'd received had been something and a lot more than anyone else received far as he knew.

He couldn't help the slight grin on his face as he pushed off the tree he was leaning against and headed toward the shouting. He shouted back, "Well look who's come back with an ego bigger than the Mississippi!"

He stepped into view and waved at her with the hand holding his cigar.

Damn, but it was good to see him. As usual, he looked exactly as she last saw him, which suited her just fine. There was a comfort and familiarity with him that she'd never had with anyone else.

"Just the Mississippi?,‎" she teased , waving back. "I'll have you know, Mister, that there ain't nothing bigger than my ego. Goodyear even called me, askin' if they could use my ego in case the blimp had a problem. I said yes."

By this point, she was standing in front of him, stupid smile on her face. "Now I'm gonna hug you. And I might not let go. Here's your fair warning. Speak now, or be prepared to be smothered and yelled at the same time."

"You feel better if I'd said Kilimanjaro? Or Everest?" He arched an eyebrow. "They figure out that the only thing that'd fly would be you or were you gonna surprise 'em?"

He laughed. "Bring on your worst, kid. I ain't been broken yet." It was good to see her. Older, wiser, and happier from the initial looks of things. They had a lot of catching up to do.

Without another word, she launched herself at him, hugging tightly. Through her hug, she tried to convey how happy she was to see him, how badly she'd missed his company, and most of all, how relieved she was that he wasn't mad at her.

She nuzzled her face into his chest, welcoming the ever present smell of cigars. Taking in a deep breath, she looked up at his face, arms still firmly around his waist, and smiled. "I missed ya, furball. So much. Canada isn't the same without you. Did you get my presents? I didn't wanna send them here, so I sent them to that ol' postal box you told me 'bout one time."

He hugged her back just as hard. "Missed ya too, kid." There were a lot of things tied up between the two of them but at the same time they were the same two people that had walked into the mansion all those years ago and into a new world.

"You got some interestin' ideas about what makes a present but yes, I got 'em all. Even that weird thing with the trunk and feathers." He arched an eyebrow. "Ya also had some interestin' ideas 'bout names too. Have fun with that?"

Logan tugged gently on the white streaks in her hair. "Was my point in tellin' you 'bout it." He figured if she didn't want to talk to the rest of the mansion folks, she'd at least let him know she was alive in some way. They were a lot alike that way and absorbing his personality probably hadn't helped that much.

Trunk with feathers? It took ‎her a moment to place that particular gift before she burst out in giggles.

"Oh mah gawd, Logan, I couldn't help myself with that stupid trunk. I was in Montreal, wandering around and walked into one of them curio shops. The old guy running the shop had a story for everything. I must've spent an hour in there, listenin' to him yabber on. Anyways, he pulls out that lil trunk and talks about how Moses used it for food on the ark or something, and that it'd be the perfect gift for an elder. Since I'm pretty sure you' re older than God, I figured you might recognize it. He threw in the peacock feathers for free."

Finally stopping to take a breath, she loosened her arms slightly, but still kept them around him. "And I took your advice for the name thing. Stick to somethin' you'll remember. Marie Anne D'Ancato turned to Anne-Marie Cato. Those French lessons you forced me to take sure came in handy.". She paused and gave him a sly smile. "I still think I could've pulled off Snow White. No one would've suspected it was a fake name!"

Logan had to chuckle. It sounded just like her. Always in it for a good story and usually it had gotten her into trouble. "Think it's some tribal token but the specifics are lost to me. Good thing I don't have a habit of displaying things 'cause that woulda been a hard one to explain."

"So some of my trainin' did stick with you." It'd probably been the reason why she'd be able to stay gone for so long. Not that some hard looking by Chuck or even Jeannie wouldn't have turned up something. It hadn't been his place to ask and neither of them would've intruded on her anyway. He snorted and took a pull on his cigar. "Nah, don't think so. Combined with the hair, I think they'd have smelled somethin' weird." He paused. He'd bet that she'd made a new life to go along with that new name. "So ya go by Anne now?"

She shook her head. "No, I'm not delicate enough for that. Now that I'm home, I'm back to being Rogue. Suits me jus' fine and some of the newbies don't even know I have a real name." A beat passed before she continued. "But you can call me whatever you want. Scott and Jean still call me Marie. Kane too when he's not makin' fun of me. "

Home. The last few months had been great, but something had always felt off. Now that he was back, it felt right . ‎"Soooooo.....you stickin' around for a while? I ain't too easy to get rid of now."

"It's funny, ain't it? The both of us keep comin' back to this place and somewhere along the line it became home." Most of the people he gave a crap about were related to the mansion in some way. "Good. 'Cause it was gonna take a while before I got used to callin' you anythin' else."

Logan looked at the sky then back down at Rogue. It was tempting to consider leaving again but Weapon X was still hanging over their heads and he needed to stick around to make sure Kyle came out sane on the other side. "I have a feelin' you'd come drag my sorry ass back here if I took off right now. But, nah, I don't have any plans on leavin' right now. Gonna stick around for a while, make sure nothin's been broken while I was gone." He grinned and hugged her again. "And you need to tell me all 'bout what you been up to while you've been gone. I bet you've got some stories to tell."

Sometime in the course of the conversation, the hug had turned more into a warmth thing. Storming out of the house with just a sweater, she was starting to become aware of the temperature. "If'n you're listenin', then I'm surely talkin'....but can we go to the Boathouse or somethin'? Some of us ain't impervious to the cold." She perked up a little with a proud smile. "Then you can see my paintings! I've gotten better."

"Oh yeah? So you can do a paintin' and show just how much of a stick in the mud Summers is?" He pulled back and wrapped his arm around her shoulders. "A little cold ain't gonna hurt you but c'mon then, off to the Boathouse."

She gave a giggle, and reached up to hold his hand in hers as she steered them towards the Boathouse.‎ "I'll have ya know he's been ah-mazing since I got back. Since you weren't here to whip me back in shape, Scott's been helpin' me out. He's even got me back on the team since, in his words, I was never off it in the first place. Good thing my metabolism is so high, else I'd never fit back into those leathers, the way I was living in Montreal. Poutine every day. Mmmmm."

She was suddenly reminded of one of her other gifts. "Did ya get the diploma I sent you? Fully certified art therapist now, all en francais. Je suis awesome."

"Hey, I like the guy, for the most part, nowadays, but he can still be a stick in the mud." He didn't know what it was about Marie but even after all these years she could get him talking more than anyone. He snorted. "Those leathers, still the same pain in the ass as always. Already lookin' to get back in on the action, huh? The sweet life somethin' you decided wasn't for you?"

"Yup, even got it framed and all." He even had it hanging in one of his bolt holes. He'd been surprised when it came but she'd always been full of them. "Pretty proud of you, kid. That's more education than I could stand."

"It's in my blood," she teased, poking him in his side.‎ She didn't say much else, walking in companionable silence before making a confession. "I had a good life in Canada. School in Montreal, worked random contracts in the East Coast. Settled in Vancouver for a while. It was quiet, I had friends, even had me a kitty, but....well, it didn't feel right."

She bit down on the inside of her lip. "There's so much goin' on for us mutants, and for me to hide mah head in the sand, like an ostrich....well, I jus' couldn't keep doing. And, since you hate phones and I had no way of gettin' ahold of ya, I called Kane and he picked me up from the airport. They gave me my old room, and I spent who knows how long, jus' floating around like a butterfly, doin' my own thing.‎ Anyways," she added, aware she was blabbing on. "I haven't done much therapy or anything, but I started a drop in session for art, and I've pretty much been livin' in the studio. I'm pretty sure that's all you've missed."

Nope, that was a lie. "Oh, and Adri dragged me to mutant speed dating. We had to leave when a guy groped her, and the facilitator wanted to give her a time out. It was pretty funny."

"You don't have to explain that to me. We all have to come to the decision to be in this fight for ourselves. You were young when you came here. You hadn't seen enough of the world." He stopped walking and paused to get her to look at him. "You needed to get out there, live a life that didn't revolve 24/7 around mutants and the idealized hope for the future or the chaos of the present." He chucked her under the chin lightly. "Look at me, I'm in this fight but I keep comin' and goin' but what matters is what you do while you're here and what you pick up outside that can help you when you come back."

Logan arched an eyebrow. That was something he'd never heard of before. "Mutant speed datin'? When the hell did that become a thing?" He laughed hard. "You can't take that girl of Kane's anywhere can you. Ya got out of there without killin' anybody right?"

Rogue rolled her eyes, but part of her enjoyed the concern. "Yes sir," she replied. "I, Marie, promise to do what I can for mutantkind, especially if it involves ass-kickin'.... theirs, not mine." With a tilt of her head, she continued speaking. "An' in case y'all haven't realized, I'm a grown woman now. And....this is hard for me to say.....but....well, you were right." It was almost painful to say that. "I needed the experience because I was feelin' restless before, but now, I know I'm where I wanna be. I got mah friends here, and there ain't nowhere else I'd rather be."

She grinned broadly. "She kicked the guy in the balls,‎ but he had it comin'. I like her. I'm glad Kane's got a good woman. He deserves it. Now," she added, looping her arm in his elbow and tugging him to start walking again, "it's your turn to catch me up. "

"Smartass," he retorted right back at her. He just gave her a look. It was kinda hard to miss that. She wasn't the same girl, woman, that'd left. She'd come back different, more herself. "Ya make it sound like I'm never right. I can be right when you ask me the right questions."

Logan let himself be tugged along. "Not much to say." He shrugged. "Just the usual, got into a bit of trouble in Europe and Asia before I finally dragged my ass back here. Went on a coupla missions, one against Magneto and his idiots and 'nother to rescue one of the students from her crazy family. Chuck put me back on staff as a self-defense teacher and I had a couple students who had specialized lessons." He scratched the back of his neck. "Not sure what happened to that when I left. Probably found other teachers."

He needed to stop doing the disappearing act. That sticking around thing needed to stick for once. "Caught up with people and met a guy named Wade who loves tacos a bit too much. Seems he was in the program once upon a time too. Then...a weekend away turned into a lot longer until Kane called me back in for the Weapon X shit we just got back from. So ya know, same old, same old."

Sounded like it. "I met Wade too," she said, amused at the small mutant world she lived in. "We watch ‎Golden Girls together. I like him. I didn't know he loved tacos, but who doesn't love tacos?‎"

The boathouse was coming into view. She felt oddly nervous bringing him there. It used to be a place of solitude for them, ‎and now it was bright, filled with colours, with people coming and going."I think it'll be good for ya to stay a bit. Some of these kids don't know your legend and they're not even scared of ya." She gave a shudder in mock horror. "You can't let that stand."

"That tends to be Wade's usual question. Top it off, he can demolish a buffet as well as you and me." Logan felt the tension build up in her and didn't know what could be causing it. "Maybe I've mellowed in my old age. Think most of 'em know my reputation I've just been bad at reinforcin' it."

He pushed open the boathouse door when they got there and waited for Rogue to step inside before following. "Ya wantin' me to go destroying walls and wakin' people up in the middle of the night again?"

"You were never as bad as ya thought you were," she said softly. She wondered if he still thought of that night when she'd woken him up in the middle of the nightmare. ‎ It took a while for the sensation of his claws to fade.

Walking in, she flicked on the light and did a little bow. "My studio. Whatcha think?" It was an absolute disaster, with tarps on the floor and various easels propped open. One had a half done landscape of the school, ‎another had an abstract in greens and blacks, and on the desk was a battered sketchbook. Picking it up, she brought it over to him. "This was gonna be your next present," she admitted, handing it to him. "I kept it during my whole time away, sketched whatever looked good and made me happy." She flipped through the pages, and stopped on a pencil drawing of a kitten playing in a daisy field.

In actuality, it was stuff that at the time that reminded Rogue of Logan. When she was feeling sad or lonely, she'd looked through it and reminded herself that at least one person missed her.

As if finally realizing she'd been lost in thought, she looked up from the picture and smiled. "Here ya go, sugar."

Logan looked around and shook his head but there was a smile playing around his lips. "Looks lived in if also a bit like a disaster area. The kids comin' down to visit ya? I think they'd enjoy bein' down here and you teachin' 'em."

He glanced at the half finished pieces with curiosity. He wondered which ones were hers and which ones were done by students. "Look forward to seein' what all caught your eye." When she got lost in one of the pictures, Logan frowned. Were there bad memories tied up in it? Things she wasn't telling him about or something else. He couldn't read her quite as easily as he had in the past. "Thanks, kid. Your presents were always a bit of a highlight whenever they came in."

He took his time taking in every detail of every sketch and then carefully turning the page to the next one. There was a wide array from the kitten in the daisy field that had caught Rogue's attention to the smoky curl of a bar around a half drunk beer to wide open skies and mountaintops.

She hopped onto the table, swinging her legs lightly ‎in the air while he looked at the book. "Kids come and go. See over there?" there was a sign on one of the walls. "For the ones that don't got my number, its right there. Seeing as I'm not doin' much, I'm usually free to come and help out. Angel has a darkroom here too, and really even though it's a shared space, I kinda took over, hence the mess y'all were commenting on."

Catching a glimpse of one picture, she smiled. "Oh! That's one of my favourites!" It was one of the few pictures in colour. A little boy was watching a balloon float up in the air, rain pouring down, and a huge smile on his face. "Canada Day ceremony. That little boy's mama let him play in as many puddles as he wanted. He was so happy. Relaxed. Not afraid of anything. I like to think we all were like that once. Even you. Cute little cuddly kid."

"Not sure I was ever cute and cuddly. And even if I was I think the thought would horrify a lot of people." Most probably wouldn't be able to picture him as anything but who he was now. He couldn't even picture that. Sometimes he wondered what memories of his lay just out of reach though it didn't happen often anymore. He had years of memories he could remember now.

"Ya want my help gettin' back into shape?" He fully expected Summers and Kane to have her in fighting form in no time but if there was anything of the girl he knew still left then she'd rather get there sooner than later and with as few witnesses as possible. He wasn't looking to teach any students right now and had as much time to kill as Rogue did.

"If you're offerin', then yes, I do. See this?" She pinched a miniscule inch from her side. "That needs to go away. I don't wanna be corseted in the suit. That'd jus' be embarassing." She thought for a moment. "Scott said the only Danger Room times he can schedule me in are for the early morning or late nights, so whatever works best for you, sugar, I'm down with it. You won't let me get away with anything half-ass." She hopped down off the table, and leaned back on her hands, which still gripped the edges. "I'm free this week and next -- wait, no I'm not."

She tapped her foot for a bit before continuing. "I'm going to see my parents next week. Gonna drag Jessica, Julian and Tandy and see how it goes. Turning it into a road trip. I'm mentorin' Jess,ya see, and Julian's become one of my best friends and I'm trying to get Tandy to talk to him again 'cause they have this fake papparazzi relationship ‎that's more than it seems and neither wants to admit it." She tilted her head and smiled."There'll be plenty of drama. Wanna come?"

She knew he'd say no, but she still wanted to offer.

Logan arched an eyebrow. Far as he could tell she looked perfectly fine to him but if she wanted to use that as an excuse to train harder then he'd go along with it. "You know me. I can do either. Early mornin' for the first one? See if that works for us both and if not we'll change to late night."

He closed the sketchbook and rested his hands on top of it. "Always got somethin' goin' on don't you. We can get a few trainin' sessions in before you go." He shook his head. "You're wantin' to mix me and drama? You have been gone too long. Nah, think I'll pass. You don't need me addin' more fire to the mix as it is. Plan a less headache inducing roadtrip next time then I'll go."

"I knew you'd say yes to the morning session," she said with a little groan. "Since I know your sadistic ass is gonna force me outside more often than not, I'll only book a few indoor sessions,kay?"

"And I like to keep myself busy,” Rogue continued, walking towards an easel. “No sense sittin' around watchin' paint dry. I figured you'd say no, but that's okay. I'm definitely up for a road trip whenever. Not working' has its freedoms! Now come over here and look at this abstract, and tell me what you think.”